My mama lied about her age so she could start working in a restaurant as soon as she turned 15. By the time she became a single mother to me 9 years later, she’d moved to another state, but her job was the same. And now it was a job of necessity instead of choice. After all, there was a second mouth to feed.
Mama worked a lot when I was little. Instead of story-book memories, I have snapshots frozen in my mind.
Eating half a watermelon on my Rainbow Brite lap tray in the living room floor.
Throwing up in the middle of the night and having her roll the brown floral comforter down to the foot of the bed and grab another blanket because she was so tired.
The smell of Mama’s clothes when she got home from her shift.
This last memory, the smell of her clothes, is the one that sticks. Probably because she’s been in the restaurant business for most of my life so that’s what I know.
When I was little and she didn’t have a sitter, Mama’d sneak me into work with her. I’d stay in the upstairs office while she worked below, the smell of hot grease and salty pickles wafting up through the drop-hatch in the floor. And then we’d get in the car to go home and Mama would still smell like the restaurant.
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, Mama worked various jobs in restaurants. All fast food. All reeking of meats cooked on a flat grill. All with the promise that one day she’d work for herself and not for someone else.
As I grew up I came to hate that hot, beefy smell of grease and sweat. The way it left everything feeling slick and grimy.
The grease permeated everything. Her hair, her car, her shoes. She’d come to pick me up from wherever I was and all I could smell was old french fries.
When I interviewed for my first job and the manager asked me why I thought I should work there, my 16 year old self curtly replied that I thought I was better than flipping burgers at McDonald’s down the mall. There was absolutely no way I was going to work in a fast food restaurant.
And I meant it. For about six months.
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Six months after I started my first job in a department store my mama realized her dream of working for herself and opened her own restaurant. A drive-thru burger and biscuit joint. A greasy spoon. And because I would be the beneficiary of her hard work, I now had a second job.
A second job I didn’t necessarily want but couldn’t exactly refuse.
Suddenly I found myself waking up at 4 a.m. on Saturday mornings to go into the restaurant and work alongside my mother. While she made biscuits and sang hymns, I’d man the grill, feeling the heat on my face and the pop of grease on my arms, lost in my thoughts while I tried to stay awake.
And then I’d leave the restaurant to go home and try to scrub the smell of grease from my skin before I had to be at Sears for my shift in the Ladies’ department.
I’d turn on the shower as hot as it’d go and lather up my hair two or three times. I’d use the most perfumed body washes and soaps I could find. Anything to try and rid myself of the smell of grease.
Nothing worked.
I’d go to Sears hoping and praying that no one could smell me. As far as I know, no one ever did.
While my restaurant days are behind me and Mama’s drive-in closed a while ago, she still works with food and probably always will.
And the smell of hot grease, even though I still detest the way it seeps into everything and sticks around for days, will always remind me of my Mama’s love and sacrifice.
For this week’s Remembe(RED) post, we were asked to choose a sound or smell that reminds us of something from our past and write about that memory. There is no scent that sticks in my mind more than this one.
I love you, Mama, and I’m thankful for all the long hours you spent working in someone else’s kitchen.
I absolutely love this piece. The descriptiveness in the smells and emotions they invoked is so strong. You really show the inner struggle between love and loyalty versus the need to follow your own dreams and needs.
What a great personal piece.
Thanks, Schwandy. Thanks a ton.
What a great post. I could vividly picture each moment & memory.
Thanks, Suz! Glad you enjoyed it!
I really like this because it doesn’t have a sweet ending. I like that you sound like you hold a bit of resentment at the sacrifices your mom, you, had to make. No one wants her mom to have to make sacrifices.
I used to waitress for years, and was always grossed out by that smell once I left the restaurant. That clingy odor that wouldn’t wash out of my apron. So I can smell that, feel that slickness, with your words.
Great job.
Came by from TRDC.
When I was little, I didn’t understand that it might be a sacrifice, you know? I just knew that I hated that she smelled that way when she worked. I never gave a thought as to whether or not she liked what she did everyday.
The thing that is worse than working in a restaurant and smelling like the food when you leave? Working in a bank and opening a night deposit bag where the money smells like stale grease and fried fish.
Thanks for stopping by!
A very vivid, well written piece that “tells” of your love for your mother yet your hatred of fast food which kept you and your mother housed, fed, clothed… Oh the irony.
(found you via TRDC)
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE some fast food 🙂
But I hate how hard the life can be and how little reward there is in it sometimes for those who work in that industry. I hate the stigma the job can sometimes have.
Thanks for stopping by!
You described this so well that I could practically smell the grease.
Isn’t it funny how a smell we dislike so much can bring back so many fond memories.
You really displayed that.
I loathe the smell of grease. And yet? It smells like childhood and I loved that.
“As I grew up I came to hate that hot, beefy smell of grease and sweat. The way it left everything feeling slick and grimy.”
I know this smell because my Mom worked in a school cafeteria for YEARS. You described it to a tee. Her clothes always reeked and took a shower every afternoon! HA! I hated it mostly because it meant that she had to work but I also knew it represented her sacrifice and later realized that part of the reason she did work was so that she and I could go shopping at the mall for “girl” things! 🙂
Great post!
I remember the coating of grease on her shoes. Black tennis shoes. But greasy.
I LOVE this post! Both my brothers and I always had jobs in the food industry and I remember the smell of the biz so well. In fact, every now and then I will get that whiff of smell when I am at a restaurant and be instantly transported to any of the places I used to work.
Excellent imagery, my friend.
And what an awesome mama! 🙂 I know where you get it from!
I’m so glad you love it! I actually came to enjoy working in the restaurant with her. It was nice to meet so many different types of people.
And yes, my mama is awesome.
What a wonderful post.
It doesn’t represent the love & sacrifice your mother had, but I have a similar food-smell revulsion. I can’t stand the smell of movie theater popcorn, after spending a summer working the concession stand at a movie theater and going home feeling like I was just covered in butter.
I can totally imagine. I feel like just GOING to a movie leaves me smelling like butter and popcorn.
Awe how sweet Miranda! Your mom was always a hard worker and I LOVED her biscuits before school. This post makes me want to run hug my mom, she worked all the time like your mom and still does! They are much stronger than we ever though they were.
lymi.
Our moms will always work. Retirement is not in their vocabulary. And they are so, so strong.
Man, what I wouldn’t do for one of her biscuits right now!
No kidding, me too.
One of my FB friends posted yesterday that the inventor of the greatest biscuit in the history of biscuits had died (Bojangles’ founder). I was like “wha?! My MIL is still around!!”
She didn’t invent the biscuit. She just made them perfect.
My question was answered in one of the comments–you’ll still eat fast food, huh?
I loved this post. That’s how I feel about the smell of sawdust–my dad owned a lumber yard.
I love fast food. LOVE!
this is maybe my favorite post ever from you! i feel so honored for this glimpse into your past, your life, what makes you, YOU. What a wonderful mama, sacrificial, hard-working, loving… sounds like someone else i know 🙂
There are so many stories like this that have made me ME, you know? I didn’t see it then. But now? I totally see it.
I just wanted to tell you that I have fallen head over heels in love with your blog. As a 29 year old English teacher and mom to a 6 month old, I want desperately to have a cup of coffee with you. As a reader and lover of words, I am totally intimidated and in awe.
Just wanted to let you know 🙂
AHH! Yay! So glad you fell in love!
I do love some coffee! And there’s no need to be intimidated. I don’t bite. Much.
Loved It! It made me stop and think how much parents do for their kids. I know I never appreciated all my dad did til I was much much older. Bravo!
I don’t know if I appreciated everything she did for me until two years ago, honestly. I always knew she’d worked hard for every little thing we had, but to really appreciate it? I had to become a mom.
This was such a beautiful tribute to your love for your mom and her sacrifice. How incredible. Love it.
Thank you! My mom is a beautiful lady and completely deserving of more tribute than just this.
I love stories like this that show how parents sacrificed for their kids. I can see so much love here on both sides – how incredible. Great way to portray this part of your relationship.
I think my mom’s life has been full of sacrifice for me. And now that I’m a parent, I love her more because of it.
thank you for your transparency on this piece. and for leading us through the confusion of feelings you had around her job… that it was her, that you resented it a little, that you felt some shame about the smell clinging to you later… and then the realization of sacrifice. It was really well done!
Thank you, Frelle, for your kind words.
I enjoyed reading this tribute to your Mom. The writing really evoked the scent of the restaurant grease and what you remember from that time. Great work. My brother worked at Taco Bell during college. Oh my word, the smell! I worked at Dairy Queen, and I would actually come home smelling like ice cream.
Ugh, restaurant grease! That smell!
But smelling like ice cream? That I would not try to scrub off!
Love this. Love it. I learn a new piece of you each day, it seems. So I guess that answers you question–no, those of us working next to you in the ladies’ department at Sears had no idea. I always thought you had it so “together,” but I had no idea how true that really was.
I guess being on the north end of the county you maybe never ate at Mama’s restaurant…
And I’m so glad you never smelled the bacon grease on me! It was most definitely there. Every Saturday.
I worked in a pizza place for a few years. That smell permeated my car. It was gross. Mostly because it was Domino’s pizza. Now a good pizza? And I’d be sleeping in my car. Mmm pizza.
Yep. Mmm, pizza.
And I do still love a good bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit, even if I don’t love the smell.
This was very sweet. I liked the mix of emotions and the teenage honesty. There were a lot of images that made it easy to picture.
Thanks, Jack!
Thank you sweetie for this amazing tribute! I love you more than words could say. Our love (a mother’s love) is like God’s love for us it is definately unconditional, cause no matter what our children do it is never anything that would make us stop loving them. The sacrifices that I made don’t seem like sacrifices to me, we do what we have to do, with what we have to do with. I didn’t go to college and as you said started working at15 and loved every minute of it. I love what I do and in my work that shows. I had a man the other evening come into work and the first thing he asked me was…..where’s the biscuits?…..lol this was 7:00 at night and his comment was, “I could eat your biscuits any time and they don’t have to have anything but butter on them.” You make the best biscuits I have ever tasted. It is those things that I love the most, not the long hours or the early hours, but the people that make up the business, YOU and EVERYONE else. I feel complete when I accomplish a task set before me, and looking back to 29 years ago, I feel complete when I look at you and what you’ve accomplished knowing that I had a small part in making you, who you are today! I love you!
See? And that’s another thing I love about you. You pour your heart into what you do and love where you are.
And I know that you love food and love what you’ve spent your life doing. Believe me. I’m carrying around a few pounds of that love right smack on my Browning hips. 🙂 But sometimes I think of how smart you are and how wonderful you are at everything you touch and I just think of what COULD have been if you’d had the same opportunities you made sure I had.
I love you, Mama.
beautifully written. and not just because it’s a lovely tribute, but because i can actually see you doing these. i can smell the grease that you smell. i can see you tired at the grill. i can hear your mama singing. that’s what good writing does for me, it takes me there.
That means so much coming from you, Tiff. I’m glad you liked it.
Miranda, this was absolutely beautiful. There’s nothing more to say. It just was perfect.
Thank you, Jess. Thank you so much.
Wow… gritty and honest. But so filled with love. It’s hard when we feel like we are giving up our lives, when we want more. Our sacrifices… This was touching seeing your mother’s sacrifices for you and yours for her. And done out of love. Beautiful writing.
Thank you, Bobbie. I’m so glad you liked it. I don’t know if my mama ever felt like she was giving up what she wanted for me, but when I see how smart she is, I sometimes wonder what she would’ve been capable of.